Today, I spent an hour or so wiring three ground-fault circuit interruptor outlets (GFCIs) in the bathroom. It's all 12 gauge wire in there so it's quite difficult to bend it and stuff it all back into the boxes. Still, I think I did a pretty good job. Progress on a Monday night, woo-hoo! Thank you, mindless TV for scaring me out of the living room!

I wanted to post a bit about some previous projects on the house. A couple of summers ago, we started a cedar arbor/trellis over the front walkway. I say started, because it's not done yet. The first summer, we put 4 posts in the ground and added some custom trellis on each side. The second summer, we added a "roof". There's still some more work to be done on it, but at least it looks more like an arbor now

Wiring under the window Yesterday, I decided I would try to tackle some of the electrical work, so I ripped out the old knob & tube wiring feeding the stairway lighting. After digging through mountains of blown fiberglass insulation, I'm surprised I was able to get to sleep with all the scratching. Today, I invited two friends over to finish the job - what we accomplished is truly awe-inspiring. In 5 hours, the three of us ran wiring through the walls and ceiling for a couple of outlets, and completed two double-switched wiring circuits, as well as installing fire blocking mid-span in all the stud bays.

Zoe here. We got back to working on the bathroom and house projects yesterday.While Steve worked on the framing above the sliding door to the new bathroom. I pulled lath and blown in fiberglass insulation off the stairway walls by the back door. It's icky work, and I was masked and wore long sleeves for the job. I was also careful to bag everything up when done. I hate blown in stuff!! It gets everywhere and itches like crazy! I don't know if I want to do much more of it, I also can't reach much higher, so Steve may just have to take over. hee hee As the switch for the stairwell lighting is on this wall , there's more knob and tube wiring to remove and replace, this will have to be dealt with as well. I have also done a test on the very old wall paper in the stairwell, it was originally behind painted wood paneling, which we removed. I did a lot of research online about removing old wall paper, and was not sure how easy ours was going to come off. So I decided to try the easiest method, water and vinegar and sprayed the walls... waited a while, then tried to scrape. It seemed to be coming off, not in big sheets or strips, but it did come off. It will take a lot of scraping to get it all off, but it can be done! I also had to wipe/wash the walls down afterwards as the house started to smell like vinegar. One thing that did occur to me was that the bare plaster walls are colder to the touch than the wallpapered walls. I was planning just to paint, but we may have to re-wallpaper after removing the old stuff. I'm not a fan of wallpaper at all but I may have to consider it at a later date. Steve got the framing done and hung the door to see how it would hang. We purchased the door from the Re-Store and it is very nice and brand new! We will have to figure out the floor levels as this may become an issue later on. The transition from the bathroom to the hallway and then from the hallway to the bedrooms are a little off. We have a few ideas with what we can do, but we need to really think things through and get a plan put together.

For the past two years, we've been working on our upstairs bathroom. What started out as a hallway and closet space, rather quickly came to resemble a warzone. We demolished the closets, stripped the plaster and lath off all four walls and ceiling, then we took the floor up all the way to the joists.